The Methodist Against Reform

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Oct 25, 1906

The Methodist Against Reform

A METHODIST paper has a grievance against those who “go about peddling old wives’ fables, adventism, or Saturday-Sundayism, or baptism, or tithe-giving, or missions, or ‘divine healing,’ or conditional immortality, or some such fad.” Of such persons it says: “They distribute tracts, sell books, and take subscriptions for certain periodicals. Usually the tracts they distribute advocate, with a great array of Scripture passages, some strange error of doctrine. The books they sell are expansive efforts to exploit the peculiar doctrines of the sect they represent. The error is not always easily detected. . . . Better stick to the old tried truths, to the well-established doctrines, to the recognized Christian bodies.”

While it is true that there are many who advocate mere fads and fancies in the name of religion, yet if the advice given by this Methodist paper had been followed, there would never have been any progress made in the development of the truth, and reform from established error could never have been accomplished. The scribes and Pharisees agreed with this Methodist editor and clung to “the well-established doctrines.” In contrast with their course was the attitude of the Bereans to whom Paul preached, for “they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so.” If the principle advocated by this Methodist editor had prevailed, there would have been no reformation in the sixteenth century. The adherents of the papacy ridiculed the Reformers, and urged all to stand by “the well-established doctrines.” If the people of the eighteenth century had followed the advice of this Methodist editor, the Wesleys and Whitefield would not have been given even a hearing, and Methodism would never have gained a foothold, and there would have been no Methodist editor. It is wiser to urge the people to study the Scriptures in order that they may know the truth, and thus recognize error, than to advise them to stick to their church and its doctrines. The truth is the only efficient weapon with which to meet error. A doctrine not established upon the Scriptures is not worth holding. “To the law and to the testimony.”